I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.
The black-white rift stands at the very center of American history. It is the great challenge to which all our deepest aspirations to freedom must rise. If we forget that--if we forget the great stain...
History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.
There is no communication in this world except between equals.
You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.
I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.
I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.
I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look...
I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.
I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the conten...